Rome, 13 August (Adnkronos) – Holidays at the seaside with huge feasts on the beach, barbecues in the countryside with the inevitable football match and traditional fireworks, but also the great heat, empty cities, shops ‘closed for holidays’ and the loneliness of those who remain, for some a golden opportunity, for others a disaster that must be remedied, at all costs. Ferragosto, despite everything, remains the summer holiday par excellence, always a source of inspiration for cinema. Among the Italian films, now ‘cult’, that have told the story are ‘Il Sorpasso’ by Dino Risi, ‘Un Sacco bello’ by Carlo Verdone, ‘Caro diario’ by Nanni Moretti, ‘Ferie di Agosto’ by Paolo Virzì with the recent sequel ‘Un altro Ferragosto’ filmed twenty-eight years later, ‘Una botta di vita’ with Alberto Sordi and ‘Pranzo di ferragosto’ by Gianni Di Gregorio.
Among the first to tell the story of the emptied city and the unpredictable adventures of the ‘survivors’ who remain, it was one of the manifesto films of Italian comedy: ‘Il Sorpasso’, directed by Dino Risi, written with Ettore Scola and starring two giants of cinema, Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant. It is the summer of 1962, on the day of Ferragosto, Bruno Cortona wanders around a deserted Rome on board his Lancia in search of cigarettes and a public telephone. Not finding them, he meets Roberto, a law student who has stayed home to prepare for his exams. After allowing him to make the phone call, Bruno convinces Roberto to join him.
Thus begins their adventure, in the name of comedy: Roberto finds himself seconding the enthusiastic Bruno who seems to want to enjoy every second of the day. The two are the exact opposite of each other, Roberto is as serious as Bruno is cheerful and passionate, and probably for this reason their ‘couple’ works. Risi will thus tell not only about Rome but also about summer and August life in Italy in the Sixties, with crowded beaches, evenings of music and fireworks.
Another cult film, dated 1980, also set in a deserted Rome, is ‘Un sacco bello’, the directorial debut of Carlo Verdone. An award-winning Italian comedy, it tells the misadventures of three characters: Enzo, Leo and Ruggero (all played by Verdone), who in their own way try to fight their loneliness and ‘organize’ the August bank holiday. There is Leo Nuvolone, a naive and awkward boy from Trastevere, obsessed by his despotic mother who is waiting for him in Ladispoli to spend the August bank holiday. On the street he meets Marisol, a young Spanish tourist in difficulty who convinces him to host her at his home, to accompany her around Rome and then to organize a romantic dinner on the terrace. But at the best moment her boyfriend will drop in.
Enzo is a big boy in his late twenties who hides his loneliness behind a false sense of security and unlikely anecdotes. He convinces his unmotivated acquaintance Sergio to go on holiday to Krakow on August 15th. But as soon as he is out of town, Sergio feels very ill and Enzo is forced to take him to a hospital, where he entertains the nurses and porters with his amazing stories. Sergio’s emergency hospitalization for gallstones ruins the trip. Enzo does not give up and desperately searches for someone to replace him.
Ruggero, a scatterbrained hippie who believes he has had a mystical experience, lives in retreat in a community in Città della Pieve, where free love and ‘detachment from the materialistic world’ are professed. Finding himself in Rome with his girlfriend Fiorenza to beg at a crossroads, he casually meets her father, who invites the two into his house for a chat in an attempt to convince his son to fall into line. There, the couple entertains themselves with an odd trio of characters (an ambiguous priest, an arrogant and moralistic professor and the fussy and talkative cousin Anselmo) in what gradually turns into a surreal and pathetic dialogue of the deaf.
Another story of a deserted Rome on the day of Ferragosto is told in 1993 by Nanni Moretti in the first of three episodes of ‘Dear Diary’ – awarded for Best Director at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival – in which the director ‘rediscovers’ the city on his motorbike, crossing various districts of the capital. ‘In Vespa’ – is the name of the episode – is a journey through the beauties (and ugliness) of the landscape, architecture and monuments of the eternal city, accompanied by the director’s reflections that range from film criticism, to sociology and the multifaceted urban planning of the districts he passes through: from Garbatella to Spinaceto, south of the capital, up to Ostia, in the area where Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed and where a monument to his memory stands.
And again: ‘Pranzo di Ferragosto’, a comedy debut as director by Gianni Di Gregorio, who is also the screenwriter and actor, in which the protagonist is Gianni, a middle-aged man, an only child, who lives with his mother in an old house in the center of Rome. Bullied by her, a fallen noblewoman, he drags his days between household chores and the tavern. The day before Ferragosto, the administrator of the condominium offers to host his mother in his house for the two days of vacation. In exchange, he will deduct the debts accumulated over the years on condominium expenses. Forced to accept, Gianni will also find the administrator’s aunt in the house, whom he does not know where to put. Gianni, overwhelmed and annihilated by the clash between the three powerful characters, works heroically to make them happy. He feels ill and calls a doctor friend who reassures him but, implacably, leaves his old mother with him because she is on duty at the hospital. Gianni goes through twenty-four hours of hell. When the long-awaited moment of farewell arrives, however, the ladies change the cards on the table…
A similar story, with the loneliness of the elderly as the protagonist, was the one told in ‘Una botta di vita’, a 1988 comedy directed by Enrico Oldoini, with Alberto Sordi. It’s the eve of Ferragosto, Elvio Battistini is an elderly man who finds himself alone at home after his family leaves for Greece on holiday, abandoning him in the city. A fate that unites him with his peer Giuseppe Mondardini, a solitary individual but full of vitality, owner of a Lancia Aurelia. The two then decide to leave for Bordighera, but end up meeting in Saint Tropez, where they live paradoxical and tragicomic adventures.
A completely different scenario – under the banner of seaside holidays – is that of ‘Ferie d’agosto’, a film by Paolo Virzì from 1996, shot on the island of Ventotene: the story of the forced cohabitation of two families, neighbors, at opposite ends of the spectrum, at least on paper. The Molinos – the left-wing intellectuals, radical chic and snobbish – and the Mazzalupis – the ‘nouveau riche’, superficial and noisy. Lifestyles, political thoughts and sentimental relationships experienced differently. The comparison between the two will soon lead to a clash. And the film will immediately become the social mirror of Italy in those years. It will be the story of a left in an identity crisis, disoriented in the face of a new that is advancing and that takes the form of a visceral indifference and an equally overbearing racism. Their behaviors are opposite and contrary, but not too much.
And the latest film in theaters, in chronological order, is precisely the sequel to the film by Virzì who, after twenty-eight years, has returned to film, with ‘Un altro Ferragosto’, on the island of Ventotene where the Molinos and the Mazzalupis meet. The return of both clans to the island is the occasion for a new confrontation and for the rediscovery of old and new characters. Sandro Molino is now dying and his twenty-six-year-old son Altiero, a digital entrepreneur married to a model, decides to invite his father’s friends to spend one last summer together. But in the same days the town also hosts the wedding of Sabry Mazzalupi, who has become an internet celebrity, which brings to Ventotene not only the woman’s family, but also journalists, curious people and social climbers.
